"But to proceed from this sorrow, I began to meditate how I might undo my father's false and wicked conspiracies, who sought to bring a base traitor and a slave into the throne imperial; for I well perceived as long as he held the treasure, there was a possibility of deposing your Majesty. And this troubled my thought exceedingly, so that I labored how I might find out where my father's treasure was hid; and to that end I watched and attended night and day in the woods, in the bushes, and in the open fields; nay in all places wheresoever my father laid his eyes, there was I ever watching and attending. Now it happened on a time, as I was laid down flat on the ground, I saw my father come running out of a hole, and as soon as he was come out, he gazed round about him, to see if any discovered him; then seeing the coast clear, he stopped the hole with sand, and made it so even, smooth, and plain, that no curious eye could discern a difference betwixt it and the other earth; and where the print of his foot remained, that with his tail he stroked over, and with his mouth so smoothed, that no man might perceive it: and indeed that and many other subtleties I learned of him there at that instant. When he had thus finished, away he went toward the village about his private affairs. Then I went presently toward the hole, and notwithstanding all his subtlety, I quickly found it; then I entered the cave, where I found that innumerable quantity of treasure, which can not be expressed; which found, I took Ermelin my wife to help me; and we ceased not, day nor night, with infinite great toil and labor, to carry and convey away this treasure to another place, much more convenient for us, where we laid it safe from the search of any creature. "Thus by my art only was the treason of Bruin defeated, for which I now suffer. From hence sprang all my misfortune, as thus: these foul traitors, Bruin and Isegrim, being of the King's privatest council, and sitting in high and great authority, tread upon me, poor Reynard, and work my disgrace; notwithstanding, for your Majesty's sake, I have lost my natural father. O my dread Lord, what is he, or who can tender you a better affection, thus to lose himself to save you?" Then the King and Queen, having great hope to get this inestimable treasure from Reynard, took him from the gibbet; and the King, taking a straw from the ground, pardoned the fox of all his trespasses which either he or his father had ever committed. If the fox now began to smile, it was no wonder; the sweetness of life required it: yet he fell down before the King and Queen, and humbly thanked them for mercy, protesting that for that favor he would make them the richest princes in the world.